Starting the mortgage free path

bownyboy

Realised I still had my old iPhone 3GS in the drawer so a couple of clicks later and money magpie says they'll give me £41 which is about the best out there I think.

More money to add to the overpayment ISA pot.

bownyboy

Am on a roll today (got man flu so at home, dosed up!). Just checked the current account that my mortgage payment comes out of and because my mortgage payment was amended by a few pounds due to my overpayment in January, its in credit by £37.

As I don't use this account for anything else (was a condition of the mortgage that I had to open their current account). Just transferred it to the mortgage pot.

Total of £41 + £37 + £30 = £108 in just a few days of money I didn't realise I had.

If only every week was this productive!

bownyboy

I find the number of posts I make in a month is inversely proportional to how I'm feeling about my overpayment journey.

Currently I'm in that mid point lull of it feeling like its going to take forever...

So, how to keep the momentum and motivation up? I've decided to do a health check of where I am and what else I can / can't do to ensure I stay on track.

bownyboy

Time for some stats:

• 58 - The number of payments left If I maintain my overpayment plan before becomming mortgage free
• 29.58% - The amount of mortgage paid off
• 68 - the number of months my overpayments have reduced the mortgage term by so far
• £59 - The amount of monthly interest saved compared to this time last year

bownyboy

So after reading numerous articles online at Monevator and here, I've decided to change my approach to overpaying.

Normally each January I make a large overpayment of additional ISA savings I've saved up throughout the year (as my Santander mortgage only allows £500 per month, but an additional 10% in January).

From January I've decided to leave it in the ISA and split some of the payments into a Stocks & Shares ISA.

I'll continue with the £500 a month into the mortgage, but work towards being mortgage neutral rather just overpaying.

The added benefit is that I'll have a bigger cushion should anything unfortunate happen and I need access to the money.

bownyboy

After reading all the news again about imminent price rises for fuel, I decided to fix with EDF until March 2017.

We were already on their previous fix until June 2014, but I decided to take the £15 exit fee hit and move over now. Took 2 clicks on the website to do it.

Looks like I'll be paying between £5 and £10 per month more, but considering we've had no price rises for last 2.5 years, I think its a good deal all in.

bownyboy

Week 2 of breaking the morning cappuccino habit and it's surprising how easy it is after the first few days. It was only a £1 each morning but that's still £22 a month.

We also have a great coffee pod machine at work, so no excuses really!

bownyboy

Start of the month and payday again:

• January 2013 - £118,289 / £418 / £13.95
• February 2013 - £117,302 / £393 / £13.11
• March 2013 - £116,372 / £390 / £13.00
• April 2013 - £115,439 / £386 / £12.90
• May 2013 - £114,508 / £383 / £12.79
• June 2013 - £113,574 / £380 / £12.70
• July 2013 - £112,541 / £377 / £12.59
• August 2013 - £111,690 / £374 / £12.48
• September 2013 - £110,744 / £371 / £12.38
• October 2013 - £109,795 / £368 / £12.27
• November 2013 - £108,843 / £365 / £12.17

Ring fenced ISA savings of £5,000 so effective balance of £103,843

gallygirl

Not far till you break the 100k barrier :j

bownyboy

gallygirl wrote: »

Not far till you break the 100k barrier :j

Yep my prediction is February 1st 2014 at £99,947, will be quite the milestone and mean I would have paid off £49k from the balance since I started overpayments in Jan 2011.